Not Exactly...
Sorry to be technical but: patents and inventions aren't *ideas about doing things* but instead *reductions of practice*. People have long dreamed of flying, even told stories and made imaginary depictions of such inventions for centuries, but practical flying machines weren't available until the Wright Brothers--who developed and *reduced to practice* several inventions that made flying actually feasible. They patented the controls that actually made planes flyable. ** https://patents.google.com/patent/US821393A/ **
I just skimmed over the '703 patent (publicly available) and while it might not stand up under today's examination guidelines (they are VERY different than they were in the late '90s and early '00s) it does seem to reduce things to practice that weren't conceivable when drafted. It's no like this guy came out of the blue--he worked at Georgia Tech and his work became public as soon as it was published in the early 2000s and it has dozens of citations. He probably has a case. ** https://patents.google.com/patent/US6697730B2/en **
Patents expire after 20 years--and his will expire around 2020 so its unlikely to he will get much from Lyft going forward. IMHO they can at least pay him for paving the way for the existence of their company many years before school kids got together and thought they had a great business idea. He's a retired professor, how much does he need/want?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
